‘A portmanteau of ragged dreams’ — Sunniva Sets Forth by Fiona Smith

Fiona Smith, in Travellers of the North (Arc Publications, £8), a chapbook of 19 poems about St Sunniva (or Sunnifa), a ‘sheep-stealing unhusbanded harlot’ who, forced out of Ireland, sailed in the 10th century to an island off the Norwegian coast, beautifully captures the rhythms — if not the alliteration — of Old English verse, and the texture, too, of Old Norse. The poetry is peppered with words such as timian, streel, ferry loupers, currach, bonxies, heimslige, heartscald, Jarl, Oileán na marbh, and the Haaf. Sea Terrors conjures up the demons of the deep — Poseidon, Neptune, Aegir, the Draugen, and the Kraken — and SeIja tells (cf Tom Petty) of living like a refugee, leading Smith to conclude: ‘Beautiful wild travellers of the North, | you’re crazy, you drink, and you fight’.